


send a blessing

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 09:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: The infernal crying that will not stop turns out to, unsurprisingly, be a baby.“We cant leave it here,” Ike says.





	send a blessing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aromantic-eight (rbmifan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rbmifan/gifts).

> the request was for an au where soren and ike find priam as an abandoned child and adopt him

The merchant caravan was too small to have more than two guards, and both were older soldiers, from the wars no doubt, who had been but little use against the bandits that came upon it. By the time that Ike reins in on the hill above the ruined carts, it’s far too late for the Greil Mercenaries to do much of anything: the battle is over and done, the looting is finished, and the fires are smoldering. Still, Ike dismounts and picks his way down to the two overturned carts, Soren following tiredly in his wake as the rest of their company disperses to go check the surrounding area for any survivors.

There’s not much to look at. The people who once owned these wagons are dead, and they’ll bury the bodies before they move on, take what identifying trinkets remain to the next town to pass around to see if there’s surviving family. With traveling peddlers like this, there’s almost no chance any next of kin will ever surface to learn of the deaths.

Like as not, the whole of the family was on the road together. That is the way of things.

As they approach, though, a sound picks up—one that Soren would be hard-pressed to mistake for anything but what it is. A low, muffled wailing comes from one of the ruined carts, and once it begins, it just raises in pitch and distress. The infernal crying that _will not stop_ turns out to, unsurprisingly, be a baby. An infant, not possibly more than—by Ike’s estimate—probably a month old, at the outside. Its mother is dead, and Ike has to disentangle it from where she fell, protecting it.

“We cant leave it here,” Ike says, and Soren _knows_ that tone in Ike’s voice. _That tone_ in Ike’s voice is why Soren is alive, and it’s also the reason they have a dog. “It’ll die.”

“Ike,” Soren says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “It’ll die _with us_. We haven’t got anything to feed a baby.” He’s not even entirely sure what you feed a baby, actually. Milk? From what, a cow?

“Are you saying we should just...leave it here?” That is not what Soren is saying. What Soren is trying very hard to not say is that it would be the most humane solution to do what nature is going to do but _faster_, but then Ike says—

“Soren, look at this.”

Soren comes over as the other man lifts the infant out of the cart, cradles it in his arms. It’s tiny. It’s not much bigger than his hand. Ike brushes the baby’s hair out of its face, and Soren takes in a sharp breath, goes still and quiet, his heart lodged firmly in his throat.

There’s a brand on its forehead, the same red as his own. There’s no mistaking it for anything but what it is. He feels something impossible and strange, staring at this tiny baby, a sudden connection and kinship that he’s never really felt to anything or anyone but Ike.

Soren knows what they have to do.

“We can’t leave him here.” Ike says it as neither a question nor a plea. Soren nods in silent, stunned agreement. He does not know _what_ they can do with a baby, but they cannot leave him here. They cannot. There is, he is certain, nowhere in the world for this child but with them.

“No, of course not.” Soren reaches out his hands. “Let me take him, you can’t carry him and Ragnell.” Ike passes him the baby, and Soren knows nothing of infants beyond that which Mist coached him on the few times he ended up holding one of hers, but he knows at least to support their heads. For all his ineptitude, Soren would not let anybody take this child from him for any reason. Not now. Not ever.

They name the baby Priam, and he survives a handful of days, then weeks, in their care. He grows quickly, in the way babies always do, and Soren is fascinated and terrified by him at turns, this tiny little red-wrinkled-screaming thing, no larger than his hand and then no larger than his arm and then able to suddenly roll and crawl and soon enough _stand_ and then walk and run—

Seasons pass as they flit around Tellius, never in any one place long enough to call it home. Priam grows in fits and starts on the road, hanging in a sling from Soren’s chest and then riding atop Ike’s saddle in the lee of his arm; chasing butterflies into the weeds and tripping over the stick he’s claimed as a practice sword. Despite Soren’s frequent protestations to the contrary, Priam is mistaken for their child so frequently that it is foolishness to claim anything else.

The summer that Priam turns six, they visit Goldoa, and it is to Soren’s relief that his son is asleep by the time they arrive at the castle, dark long-since fallen, put to bed without so much as stirring. He does not need to excuse himself when his mother arrives, taking her aside.

“Promise me,” he tells her, begging. “I don’t want to know whose child he is. Not even if they’re dead. Let him live free of it.” Soren will go to his grave knowing he robbed his mother of her birthright, faced with that when he looks at himself in a mirror.

There are only so many Black Dragons, and Priam is of the same stock as his father.

Almedha smiles, brushes his hair back from his face, and whatever secret silent grief that stills her chest, she does not share it. Priam remains a mystery, and Soren does not have to bear the burden of another sundered soul, lost from their home and culture and family.

Priam is simply himself, and that is a gift most precious indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> noahfronseburg.carrd.co


End file.
